How Music Makes Us Feel
Imagine - How Music Makes Us Feel, was on BBC tonight and can be found here, on iPlayer for another week. A wonderful programme, well worth viewing.
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The last bit made me cry, it reminds me of this, posted earlier this year.
My impression was that the show was a bit over-reverent about 'music'. It seemed to be treating music as something that exists in and of itself, rather like God, instead of the sensory/perception experience in the minds of humans (and possibly some other animals) that it is.
Of course, I would agree completely that music provides the most amazing sensory experience. My issue with the programme was that the question they appeared to be asking was "why is music so amazing?", rather than "why do our brains make the combination of rhythms and melody that we call 'music' seem so amazing", or even better, "why have human brains evolved to identify and appreciate the things that we have come to call 'melody' and 'rhythm'".
A missed opportunity I felt.
Sorry to be such a grump. It is the season for a-Scooging y'know?!
Seems I expected too much of Mr. Yentob.
Now if you'll excuse me...
But as there is no other credible context to explain those things we must try...!
The best explanation I've read is in here:
Basically, the Zahavi's "Handicap Principle" proposes that throughout the animal kingdom organisms advertise their 'fitness' through extravagant displays. The more wasteful (in terms of calories and resources) a display that an animal can sustain, the greater the "fitness" that it is signalling.
The obvious example is the peacock's tail: Huge and cumbersome, it takes a huge number of calories to grow, carry about about and maintain. Only the "fittest" peacocks can display the largest tails. Peahens have thus evolved to find large tails attractive and so a feeback loop has been created in the evolutionary process (peacocks are selected for larger tails and peahens are selected to be ever more discerning about the size of the tails of potential mates).
The Zahavi's point out many behavioural examples of the 'handicap principal' in the animal kingdom. With relevance to this thread, they suggest that the human brain is essentially the human version of the 'peacock's tail'. Due to the fact that a large and healthy brain is not as visually obvious as a peacock's tail, the brain's health and size has come to be advertised through the behaviours and skills that it can demonstrate (humour, visual arts, technical skill, coordination and music (if not actual music making, then at least music appreciation and toe-tapping/clapping along)). As with anything of import, evolution incentivises us to attend to something through emotional bribes (laughter, artistic pleasure, musical enjoyment, sexual rapture, etc.,...).
Thus natural selection has given us the joy of music to make sure we engage in music making/particpation or at least recognition and appreciation, in order to show how big our brains are.
To push a certain theoretical evolutionary line would polarize the audience and be contentious to some. It could equally be suggested (as a potential editorial line) that a human's deep reaction to music bespeaks design by a creator who deeply appreciates artistic beauty ('They were made in his image'). Equally contentious in its own way. Hard evidence for either side is a tall order, and would likely not persuade either side. And that would be a whole other programme anyway.
Far better to stick just to music, and how it makes us feel. All IMHO.
evolutionary theory than in a creator. And outside the bible belt is evolution really that offensive? But I take your point, the show
wasn't really about either of those things. I suppose that ultimately that's what I found frustrating - it wasn't the show I wanted it to be! [-( Damn the BBC.
You're right it was a celebration of music and that's fine. The degree to which we are hardwired to recognise and respond to ordered rhythms and tones is remarkable - as shown in infants and the dementia patients your site above. For the show to eulogise about that is understandable. But I didn't find the show itself remarkable. To me the show seemed a bit like a factory that was making marvelous sausages out of marvelous sausages.